Brimstone Belly
The adolescent anxieties of the pastor’s daughter
Most days, I was fairly certain that when I died, God would take me into heaven. When I awoke blearily to the beeps of my alarm each morning, blinking and groaning and needing to shower, this was my thought: heaven or hell? When I shampooed my dirty-blond hair and soaped my greasy forehead with salicylic acid scrub, this was my thought: heaven? Or hell? Then I pulled on my cotton underwear and jeans, hooked my bra, chose a T-shirt and maybe a sweater, and headed to the high school.
This was my thought, the thought that haunted me. I didn’t choose to think it over and over, but there it was, and it was mine. My limbs had lengthened; there it was, deep in the marrow of my teenage bones. My face had filled out, my breasts had swollen like summer fruit, my shoulders had widened, and my thought grew with this growth. Many days I journaled around the question — while tucking my knees up on the school bus or sitting on the living room couch after dinner, surrounded by half-finished assignments.
How could I concentrate on homework?
Heaven or hell?
I pushed aside my biology textbook and grabbed again for my journal.
Heaven would depend on my faith, that funny-feeling feature of me that had been drawn out of my pores…
